I visited the Renia Sofia Museum in Madrid in the summer of 2010 and wandered into a little antechamber where they were showing a film of the bombing of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War by Franco's troops.
An old man sat beside me, quite portly, with a fisherman's cap pulled low over his head, and for some time just the two of us that sat there, riveted by the enormity of the images that we were seeing.
Then the man started to cry. His shoulders heaved silently and tears poured down his face, unhindered. I didn't know what to do but felt that this man's pain was so personal and deep that interfering at this point would be a sacrilege. And so I stood up quietly and left, touching his shoulder briefly.
As I left that room, the first image I saw was Picasso's Guernica. The juxtaposition of his painting with the horrors on the screen I had just witnessed stopped me in my tracks. The savagery of the Luftwaffe bombers on that innocent and historic town was in evidence through the grotesque imagery of Picasso's cry. The attack was random and unjustified, and those who died in that little town on market day were victims of the Nazi's intention to fine tune and ready their weaponry in a conflict that was about to be turned on the rest of the world.
After a time my gaze traveled to the other paintings and sketches close by, some by Picasso, others by the painters who tried to capture their impressions of the civil war.
What I found riveting were the number of references to the Catholic church and the involvement of their hierarchy with fascism's agenda. Sketches showing bishops blessing machine gun nests, combat helmets atop their mitres, were on display and in one case, a bishop actually wielded a gun himself.
Of course, none of this surprised me.
I knew that the church supported the "cruzada" of Franco against those on the left in what they felt to be a holy mission from God and a continuation of the work by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand who decimated the Moorish world earlier on. (Ironically, Franco used Moorish troops from North Africa as part of his "crusade").
In fact, the church was so heavily vested in the civil war that it hid its armaments in the monasteries and convents, and even under the sanctuary of their god.
A living testament to Catholicism and fascism, united as one.
An old man sat beside me, quite portly, with a fisherman's cap pulled low over his head, and for some time just the two of us that sat there, riveted by the enormity of the images that we were seeing.
Then the man started to cry. His shoulders heaved silently and tears poured down his face, unhindered. I didn't know what to do but felt that this man's pain was so personal and deep that interfering at this point would be a sacrilege. And so I stood up quietly and left, touching his shoulder briefly.
As I left that room, the first image I saw was Picasso's Guernica. The juxtaposition of his painting with the horrors on the screen I had just witnessed stopped me in my tracks. The savagery of the Luftwaffe bombers on that innocent and historic town was in evidence through the grotesque imagery of Picasso's cry. The attack was random and unjustified, and those who died in that little town on market day were victims of the Nazi's intention to fine tune and ready their weaponry in a conflict that was about to be turned on the rest of the world.
After a time my gaze traveled to the other paintings and sketches close by, some by Picasso, others by the painters who tried to capture their impressions of the civil war.
What I found riveting were the number of references to the Catholic church and the involvement of their hierarchy with fascism's agenda. Sketches showing bishops blessing machine gun nests, combat helmets atop their mitres, were on display and in one case, a bishop actually wielded a gun himself.
Of course, none of this surprised me.
I knew that the church supported the "cruzada" of Franco against those on the left in what they felt to be a holy mission from God and a continuation of the work by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand who decimated the Moorish world earlier on. (Ironically, Franco used Moorish troops from North Africa as part of his "crusade").
In fact, the church was so heavily vested in the civil war that it hid its armaments in the monasteries and convents, and even under the sanctuary of their god.
A living testament to Catholicism and fascism, united as one.